


screwed

by leftishark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/F, Genderswap, Meet-Cute, Sheithbians, Shiro (Voltron) Has a Loving Family, Strangers to Lovers, Virgin Keith (Voltron), Woodworking AU, mention of minor character death (Keith's dad), soft E but harder than M i think, too wholesome for the title, unrealistic woodworking probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:07:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22483081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftishark/pseuds/leftishark
Summary: Keith has always been an all or nothing kind of person, and in romance, it’s been nothing until now.Or: Keith and Shiro make a chair.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 126





	screwed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stardropdream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/gifts).



> wishing robin a belated happy birthday!!! thank you for being so generous with your words and soft sheiths, for being a good friend to me and many, and most of all for being you <3
> 
> thanks also to kelsey for bouncing ideas around!

Keith meets the love of her life on a Saturday morning in the lumber yard of a Home Depot. 

The woman is tall and built and looks a lot like an overgrown frat boy, which is appealing precisely because she’s not, in fact, a boy. Her short hair is buzzed in the back, bleached on top, and poking out from a backwards snapback like she belongs at a kegger and not a hardware store. Black Adidas track pants are snug around her hips and thighs, and a cut off muscle tank shows off her sleek metallic right arm, covered in swirling designs like it’s tattooed. She’s assessing the stacked lumber with a strangely attractive mix of cockiness and confusion, arms crossed and biceps bulging. 

The best thing, though, is that she’s got a cat sock poking out from one of her slides and a dog sock on the other foot, like she can’t choose between one or the other. 

Or maybe Keith is reading too much into this. It’s not like she’d know what to do, anyway. Keith has always been an all or nothing kind of person, and in… _romance_ , dating and love and all that crap, it’s been nothing until now. 

Keith doesn’t trust herself to say anything that’s not _crush me_ or _marry me_ , so she crouches down to inspect the garden stakes close by. Her old wood stain-streaked overalls are a little small after her late growth spurt, and she tries to ignore how they pull tight around her ass. The smell of fresh wood is sharp and familiar, the surface rough under her fingers, comforting as she prepares for the inevitable heartbreak when the stranger leaves. 

“Excuse me,” Keith’s future wife says, low and smooth, like some kind of gentleman. Gentlewoman. Whatever, it’s hot. 

Keith looks up from her growing pile of garden stakes. The woman is taller up close, looming over her, and her muscles are bigger. 

“Any pointers on the best wood for a beginner?” 

Keith stands, still considerably shorter than the other woman. This is the kind of conversation she can handle; she could talk about wood quality if she were captured and interrogated by aliens. “You’ll want something soft—maybe cedar or redwood,” she says, rattling off the benefits of both as she walks them down the aisle to the corresponding sections, then sustainability when the woman asks—“here’s the FSA label, but it’s greenwashing bullshit—" 

Eventually, they settle on a nice western red cedar, one of Keith’s favorite types of wood. Shiro hefts a long 2x4 onto her shoulder, arm muscles flexing. Keith helpfully offers to share her lumber cart.

“I’m glad I asked you,” Shiro says with a humble laugh once they’ve loaded all the sizes Shiro will need into the cart. “Thought you looked like you know your shit.”

Keith wills herself not to blush. She doesn’t blush. But also, she never talks to hot women, and they never talk to her. “Keith,” she says bravely, sticking her hand out. “New to woodworking?”

“Never done it before,” the woman says cheerfully, shaking Keith’s hand with her own. The metal is cool and smooth. “Shiro. Well, my roommate showed me some of the basics, but I haven’t made anything myself.” 

The handshake feels more comfortable than it should, leaving Keith ungrounded when they part. She shifts on her feet, then starts pushing the cart toward the registers. “So what’s the project?”

“I’m making a chair.” 

“A chair,” Keith repeats, eyebrows lifting against her will. “That’s, uh, a big project to start with.” 

“I like a challenge,” Shiro shrugs, mouth quirking up. 

Keith can’t help but match her sharp grin, inspired and thinking fast as they go through the checkout stand and walk out together to load the lumber into Shiro’s pickup truck. 

“Listen,” she says slowly, rubbing her hands on her overalls and aiming for casual, “I’m sure you can figure it out. If you want a hand, though…” 

Shiro lights up, devastatingly handsome. “Are you offering yours?” 

Keith goes home with Shiro’s number, plans for tomorrow, and two dozen wooden stakes for a garden she doesn’t have.

*

Keith has never built a chair in her life.

She’s built other things—a treehouse, though that was mostly her dad, seeing she was six at the time; her childhood bookshelf; the wraparound porch other features of the house. She’s got good instincts and a fair bit of experience despite being young, broke, and busy.

Chairs, though—chairs are a pain in the ass. Their joints are at odd angles and have to take a lot of stress, and as difficult as it is to make them sturdy, it’s even harder to make them comfortable. No one just _builds a chair_ for fun. 

No one except Shiro, apparently. 

“You don’t pick the easy ones,” Krolia says when Keith calls her that night. Keith isn’t sure if she means projects or women. 

“I just, I’ve never felt like this before,” Keith admits. If anyone will refrain from teasing, it’s her mom, who had her own revelation not too long ago when she met Rommelle. Now her hair is purple.

Krolia advises her to think about what she wants before she heads over there. The thing is, Keith wants a lot of things; she just doesn’t know how to ask for them, or if she even deserves them. “Trust yourself,” Krolia says in the brusque-but-gentle way of hers. 

Keith nods with no one to see her. “I can do this,” she says, mostly to herself, and she spends the rest of the evening watching chair making videos.

*

Shiro’s front porch has a little herb garden in colorful ceramic pots under the window. All the plants are impressively alive. Keith rubs the rosemary between her fingers while she waits for Shiro to answer the door, then jumps when she does.

Shiro’s in a Henley today, heather gray and clinging to her biceps. Her smile is just as breathtaking as Keith remembered. 

“You’re here!” she says like she’s surprised. As if Keith would be anywhere but here. She tries to imagine that she’s shedding layers of nerves as she takes off her shoes to carry them through the house. 

The décor inside makes Keith smile, some compromise between cheap young adulthood and more deliberate aesthetics. There’s a short squashy looking couch on one side of the living room and a long squarer one on the other, a projector instead of a TV, a series of rugby team photos in the corner. A stylized print of Yuri Kochiyama hangs over shelves of brewing kombucha—“Hunk and her girlfriend’s,” Shiro explains when she sees Keith looking. 

Shiro waves at the dining room table and its three chairs. “We’re not sure where the fourth one went, and we never got around to replacing it. I thought I’d surprise Hunk since she’s out of town for the weekend.” 

It’s sweet, if ambitious. Keith falls a little harder.

Shiro grins conspiratorially at Keith. “And… maybe I’m procrastinating on writing.”

“Ah, there it is,” Keith says, snickering to keep from swooning at the way mischief looks on Shiro. 

They don’t linger long in the house; Shiro leads them into the garage workshop, where the lumber they bought yesterday is waiting. Keith feels both at home in the organized chaos and stranger among half-finished projects that aren’t her own. The power tools are good quality, though, and it sets her at ease to turn her attention to the task at hand rather than making conversation. 

Sketching the design goes smoothly, first on paper and then on wood. Shiro has chosen a simple build that doesn’t match the existing chairs at all—not camouflaging difference, Keith thinks. Before long they’re cutting and sanding the basic components of the frame, filling the garage with sawdust and sound. 

“I missed this a lot,” Keith admits when they remove their ear plugs and dust masks for a water break. They sit on the step leading into the house, knees close but not touching.

Shiro glances over at her, lifting her safety glasses up to perch on her white floof. “Been a while?”

“Haven’t really built anything since, uh, my dad.” Keith snaps her mouth shut. She may not know a lot about all this, but talking about a dead parent is surely not the way to a girl’s heart. 

Shiro doesn’t seem fazed, though; she looks thoughtful, nodding toward the driveway beyond the open garage door. “My dad once told me everyone needs a friend with a truck,” she says. “So I thought I’d be that friend.” She looks back at Keith, her eyes gentle without condescension. “He must’ve been important to you.”

Keith nods. “He was the one who taught me. Said I might like it better than I like people.” She shrugs, grinning ruefully at Shiro. “He was right.”

Shiro laughs—with her, not at her, which makes all the difference. Keith wants to make her laugh again. Preferably about something unrelated to her dad, although he’d probably be proud to be of service. “I don’t know if it’s my place to say this,” Shiro says, “but I bet he’d be happy you’re back at it.”

“I know,” Keith mutters. “I want to, I just… shit’s expensive. And I don’t have a garage.” 

“You could use ours sometimes, if you wanted to,” Shiro offers, looking startled at her own proposition right after she says it. “I mean, as long as Hunk’s okay with it. But we keep talking about making our place more of a community space, so, you know…”

“Maybe,” Keith hedges—the offer is generous, and Shiro seems nothing but sincere, but Keith never wants to impose where she’s not wanted. “If you’re not using it all the time yourself. You think you’ll want to do some more projects?”

Shiro hums thoughtfully. “Maybe a laundry drying rack for Allura and Pidge’s new place. Or… I bet Lance would like a footstool. And it’d be nice to make my mom a little compost box for kitchen scraps.”

All of those are more manageable than a chair. Keith nods. “What about for yourself?”

Shiro pauses. “Oh,” she says. “I—I don’t know.” 

Shiro’s the one who was posed the question, but it’s Keith who flushes under her gaze, feeling seen in a way she’s never liked until now. Warmth runs up her spine and she doesn’t know where to direct it. She gives Shiro a little smile and stands to get back to work.

The back legs will be trickier: an almost trapezoidal shape cut from a single wider piece of wood so that the backrest and legs are both angled away from the seat of the chair. Keith moves the circular blade they’ve been using aside and shrugs off her red plaid flannel, tying it around her waist. She rolls her shoulders, her arms feeling freer in just a boxy black tank top.

“I’ll do the first one, and you do the other,” she suggests. Shiro nods, looking a little stunned or nervous or something, so Keith smiles and nudges her arm briefly. The touch is supposed to be comforting; it feels electric. “You got this. You’re doing great.”

Keith keeps her eyes trained on the jig saw’s narrow vertical blade as she pushes it down guide lines, following a straight edge for the leg and seat and freehanding the gentle curve of the backrest. Shiro, in turn, watches Keith’s hands intently. Keith flexes them a little at the end before she realizes what she’s doing. 

Now that she’s aware them, she can’t stop thinking about the exact placement and movement of her own hands as she clamps Shiro’s wood into place. They’re kind of nice looking, she thinks; her fingers are slender and sturdy, and she handles the tools with confidence. “All right, your turn,” she says.

Shiro pushes her sleeves up to her elbows, exposing her thick forearms and the decorated metal that mirrors the shape of her left side. Her hands are large and visibly strong like the rest of her. Dignified, if hands can be so, with a kind of elegant power. Keith wonders how they would feel against her smaller ones, or touching her knee if they sat down again, or around her—

She shakes herself when she notices the blade deflecting; Shiro’s going a little fast. “Steady there,” Keith murmurs, laying her hand lightly along Shiro’s bare forearm. 

The saw veers off the penciled guide line. Shiro huffs a laugh and moves it back into place. Keith resolves to focus. 

The chair comes together over the next several hours with minimal other mishaps. They have to improvise pocket screws when they start joining the pieces together, and angling the predrilled holes is tricky by hand. Keith offers to help Shiro make a jig for her future projects; Shiro’s returning smile is warmer than the sun shining in through the open garage door. 

They break for lunch (quick, refreshing soba) and later for tea (Shiro offers kombucha and laughs when Keith wrinkles her nose), chatting easily about families and jobs and organizing. It turns out that the imperialist techno-optimistic brocialist that manipulated Keith’s comrade-acquaintance-maybe-friends also stirred up trouble in Shiro’s antimilitary coalition; commiserating feels good. When the conversation turns to hobbies, Shiro listens with genuine interest as Keith rambles on about her bike—a beautiful Yamaha she restored, her pride and joy—and even asks to see pictures, though they can see it parked outside. Keith will have to apologize to Ezor for grumbling about the stupid poses she made her do on it. 

The sweetness of brewed rosemary just plucked from the front porch helps mellow Keith’s feelings into something gentler, slower, permeating her bones. She likes Shiro more and more; she has the air of someone who’s survived her own hell the way she implicitly understands Keith. She’s kind and interesting and snarky, in addition to really fucking hot. Regardless of anything else, Keith would like to be Shiro’s friend, if Shiro wants to be hers. 

“Wow,” Shiro says, stepping back with hands on her hips while Keith screws in the last of the corner braces that will hold the seat up. “Yeah, I can see why you love this. Look at it—it’s a chair! That we made!” 

Keith grins. She loves most parts of woodworking, but there’s always something special about the moment when disparate pieces become a recognizable whole. To see that appreciation in Shiro makes something settle in her, clicking into place.

She hands Shiro the plywood seat. “Go on,” she urges, and Shiro lays it on the frame. 

There are still finishing touches to be done—holes to be filled and every surface to be smoothed—and really, they should let the glue set until the next day, but Keith can’t bring herself to mention any of it when Shiro’s grinning so proudly. Several things happen then in quick succession: 

Shiro spins around and plunks herself down in the chair, smiling and holding her hand out to Keith. 

Keith grabs Shiro’s hand. 

The chair wobbles and Shiro’s arm jerks.

Keith stumbles forward. She catches herself with one hand on the back of the chair, almost nose to nose with Shiro.

She stares at Shiro. Shiro stares back. And then Shiro twitches toward her ever so slightly. Keith flinches back instinctively until she realizes that Shiro hasn’t done the same, that she’s waiting, lips parted, with her eyes lowered to Keith’s mouth and—oh. 

Keith kisses Shiro. 

It’s a hard, daring press of mouths, fumbling a little and straining with the awkward angle until Shiro cups her face with one hand and her hip with the other, drawing her in, and the wanting that Keith had pushed aside breaks through in full force. She clambers onto Shiro to straddle her, legs splayed wide over Shiro’s thickly muscled thighs, and lets Shiro guide them into something smoother, deeper, hot and heady with tongues brushing against each other, hands roaming wherever they can reach. 

Keith never knew kissing could feel like this, could feed an endless cycle of wanting and giving and taking, could feel so good that she can’t help the sounds of pleasure she moans into Shiro’s mouth—never knew how having them returned would amplify everything she’s feeling. With each movement of the chair she wriggles closer until she’s flush against Shiro’s waist. 

Shiro pulls back when their lips are slick and red, laughing softly and brushing sawdust from Keith’s hair. “I swear I just invited you here to make a chair.”

“Pretty sure I invited myself,” Keith says, eager to get back to what they were doing, and then some. “And anyway, what good is a chair if you’re not using it for this?” She goes in for another kiss to demonstrate. 

“You are the chair expert here,” Shiro grins, and Keith feels the smallest pang of guilt but now is not the time to come clean. “Although we could move off the chair and onto my bed.”

Keith nods enthusiastically. “Bed. Yeah. Great idea.” 

Shiro dips her chin down to look through her lashes, voice dropping low. “I’ll make you feel so good, baby. Just tell me what you want.” 

“I… uh…” Keith pushes Shiro back by the shoulders to look squarely at her, trying to convey what she means without actually saying it. “I don’t know. Anything. Everything. I—I _don’t know_.”

Shiro pauses for a moment, assessing. Keith has never felt so exposed. And then Shiro’s mouth quirks up. “Wanna find out?”

She grips Keith’s thighs and stands in one smooth motion, which has got to be the sexiest thing ever. Keith makes a wild sound that’s somewhere between a yelp and a moan and squeezes her legs tight around Shiro’s strong waist and hips. The pressure on her groin sends heat rippling through her whole body, leaving her hyperaware of everywhere she and Shiro are touching and the aching wetness gathering between her legs. 

Keith kisses Shiro again, and she doesn’t stop kissing her as Shiro walks them into the house, down the hallway, and into her bedroom.

Keith learns that Shiro looks amazing at every angle: kneeling before Keith and mouthing at her stomach as she pulls down her pants; towering over Keith, who sprawls naked on the bed, when she strips off her Henley to reveal powerful, defined abs; anchored between Keith’s thighs as Keith grinds against her tongue. Shiro’s solid bulk feels incredible under Keith and on her and wrapped around her when they playfully tussle, rolling around until Keith doesn’t know which way is which. Keith learns the pleasure of palming Shiro’s breasts and arching into Shiro’s broad hands on her ass and coming on Shiro’s fingers as Shiro murmurs sweet words against her jaw.

Sex is _fun_. It makes Keith feel good inside and out. Or maybe that’s just Shiro. 

Much later, when the sun is down and Keith is entirely wrung out, Shiro has the audacity to lean over her with concern etched into her brow and ask, “You all right there?”

“Fucking fantastic,” Keith says, taking Shiro’s hand. “I could marry you right now.” 

Shiro laughs and brings their hands up to kiss Keith’s knuckles. “Ask me again in a few years.”

*

Keith does. Shiro says yes. The chair, with their initials carved into a heart on the back, moves with them to every home they make together. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading <3 i love comments and kudos, no matter how long it's been, and i’d love to hear what you think Shiro would make for herself! i'm on twitter [@leftishark_](twitter.com/leftishark_)
> 
> [shiro, hunk, and allura met playing rugby because of aiga by sepiacigarettes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22344211)  
> [how to build a simple chair](https://howtospecialist.com/finishes/furniture/how-to-build-a-simple-chair/)  
> [chairs are a pain in the ass](https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/5oqpzh/why_are_there_so_few_chair_builds/)  
> [(maybe) sustainable wood guide](https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/the-good-wood-guide-eco-friendly-options-for-furnishing-your-home-5333472.html)  
> [maybe not sustainable after all](https://e360.yale.edu/features/greenwashed-timber-how-sustainable-forest-certification-has-failed)  
> [protective clothing](http://www.aawforum.org/community/index.php?threads/protective-clothing.11503/)  
> [Yuri Kochiyama](https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/yuri-kochiyama-was-born/)


End file.
